


finale.

by ozonecologne



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Season Finale, Season/Series 11, The Void
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-07
Updated: 2016-03-07
Packaged: 2018-05-25 06:17:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6183946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ozonecologne/pseuds/ozonecologne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thoughts on how the hell they're going to fix this. Pre-season 11 finale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	finale.

Lucifer, predictably, has bitten off more than he can chew.

He’s gotten a couple of good hits in, but the blows land like mosquitos on an alligator. Amara’s had to use more of her strength in keeping him off her than usual – Dean watches her eyes dart around the arena and her fingers clench by her side, she’s actually _trying_ not to get hit – but it’s nowhere near enough of a strain. Lucifer is flagging. His shoulders slump and he’s gotten a hole punched through Castiel’s chest cavity that’s certainly taking its time stitching itself back together.

In short, he knows they’re not going to win this one. Not even with the added firepower of an archangel. Lucifer had divine help last time the Darkness was locked away, and a couple of human hunters backing him for the final boss fight just don’t have enough firepower.

The angel and the Darkness face off, poised to pounce for the umpteenth time, and then. Then, the ground shakes. The sky itself seems to crack open, and a swoop of dread rocks Dean’s insides from where he’s crouched helplessly against the ground.

Billie steps onto the field, wind ripping through each and every one of them but her. She stands before the two celestial bodies squaring off in the battle-scarred field and she is stoic, ineffable, grim in a biblical way.

“That’s enough,” she booms in her big voice. The wind picks up, and Lucifer blinks against the glare she sends them. Amara only tilts her head, curious. “You will destroy this world,” she vows, in a dead language that everyone seems to understand regardless. Her voice reverberates in their skulls. “The war between Light-Bringer and Darkness will ravage Creation until only Chaos remains. This comes to an end today.”

The sky really does split open this time as Billie raises both her hands and calls up a flayed and shadowy portal.

Amara stares into as it opens, and Lucifer’s eyes widen in fear. Dean can see Castiel’s body go rigid, and he doesn’t blame him. He can _feel_ the wave of intense cold flare up through his veins as the sky cracks. His very skin seems to vibrate in tension, every fiber of him pulled taut and trembling. He can’t look away from the hole in the universe that Billie’s ripped open.

He knows without being told: this, this is the void she threatened them with. This is the end of everything, a pit no one climbs out of, this is what God himself had tried to fill up and only succeeded in beating back. The space where the portal begins is empty and shifting and it screams. It sucks up anything in its direct line of sight, the dirt, the grass, the dead bodies of their friends. It’s a black hole.

Billie opens her hands and looks to the frozen figures before her.

“You will both atone for your crimes. In silence, for eternity. No more,” she proclaims.

She grabs Amara by the wrist and shoves her in.

It’s quiet, but Dean can hear her gasp all the way across the field. Her eyes glisten, her mouth drops open. Absence will consume her. Darkness bleeds into the void, but the void will swallow it all. Nothing exists there, nothing can. It’s an absolute power even Amara can’t compete with. The fear in her eyes, Dean’s never seen it before. This is going to work.

Billie vanishes, and in her place stands Ca- Lucifer. He’s staring into the portal, looking deep into the abyss and God only knows what he sees back. There is a glitter of fresh tears on his cheeks.

Dragged into the orbit of the portal, Amara lashes out with one more desperate burst of self-preservation.

And sinks her nails deep into Lucifer’s shoulder.

Dean feels like he’s swallowed his heart. Cas. Cas is still in that body. She’s going to pull Cas in with them.

Dean’s on his feet before he even realizes what he’s doing, shouting over the wailing of the wind, and Sam reaches for him with panic in his face. _Don’t touch it you can’t touch it we aren’t even meant to see this it’s too big for us don’t do this you won’t make it out alive._

The worst part about it is that Lucifer just goes. Amara drags him up into the swirling nothingness and he doesn’t even fight back. Her feet, her legs, her hips, they’re all swallowed in seconds and Lucifer’s watching it happen. He lets himself be moved. The wound in Castiel’s chest has finally stopped bleeding.

When Amara’s snarling face and that damned arm is all that’s left exposed in their world, Lucifer’s hand reaches out to brush against the edges of the portal.

Dean snags the other one for himself.

What’s left of Amara blinks down at him with surprise and pain deep in her eyes. He’s never understood her infatuation with him despite all the times he’s tried to warn her off, but at this moment he thinks she might get it. On the brink of destruction, she sees that Dean wouldn’t ever try to save her. Not like he’s trying to save Castiel.

“Let _go_ ,” he hisses at her. The rage in him is enough to fight her off. Her influence is nothing compared to the hot and desperate love for his family.

Her grip only tightens on Castiel’s arm. “Never,” she howls back. There is hate in her eyes. Wild, feral hate that curls her lips back from her teeth.

All three of them edge slowly toward the end. Dean digs his heels into the dirt and yanks. Lucifer isn’t released.

Amara screams. So does Dean.

This is not a fight he’s willing to lose.

When Amara finally crumbles, when her mortal form is swallowed by the gluttonous vacuum that Billie unleashed, Dean feels a weight lifted off of him. He staggers forward like a rubber band has snapped between him and nothing, and Lucifer falls a little deeper into the portal. The void has latched on to him, and it won’t let go. Billie has marked him for oblivion.

Dean is the only thing holding him here. Dean versus cosmos. When is it ever anything different.

The sound is deafening this close. Who knew that Nothing had a sound. It’s high pitched and entropic and Dean thinks his ears might be bleeding or his head might cave in but he’ll be DAMNED if he lets go now.

“Cas!” he shouts above the static. “Get out of here!”

Lucifer’s, Castiel’s, head swivels. He turns in Dean’s grip to face him, tear tracks drying on his skin. “It’s over,” his voice says. Calmly, quiet. Afraid.

“You can’t help him now,” Lucifer says.

Dean shakes his head and pulls harder. His muscles scream in protest. It feels like each individual strand that makes up the tiny muscles in his hands, his arms, are being ripped from the bone. “Like hell,” he grits out from between clenched teeth.

A fresh tear falls from Lucifer’s eye. “It’s over, Dean. It’s over.”

He gets sucked up off the ground, and Dean pulls again. NO.

Sad blue eyes stare back against a backdrop of black. Dean’s looking straight into the abyss when he meets that stare and inexplicably feels as if the abyss is staring back. Judging them, judging him. He’s never felt so raw or vulnerable. His grip doesn’t falter.

“You can’t have him, not after everything, not after this,” Dean mutters to it. He blinks at Lucifer’s eyes and –

Oh. Oh no, no no, not that look. This isn’t Lucifer anymore, that’s _Castiel_. Their hands are clasped and Castiel’s being dragged away from him again and JESUS, this is Purgatory all over again. Last time, even though it didn’t really happen, this angel slipped through Dean’s hands as a door to a dead realm closed behind him. Last time, even though it didn’t really happen, Dean had to watch those big sad eyes get swallowed by a stitch of time and space that he was powerless to fight.

This time will not be like last time.

Castiel reaches back this time. Fingers dig into his forearm and he _clings_ to Dean. Lucifer, apparently having given up, doesn’t fight him for control.

Dean could say something right now, should maybe say some of the things he’s been holding in all this time, but he’s worried that if even one neuron devotes energy to something that isn’t puling Cas out of the void, he’ll lose him forever. So he stays quiet, he blocks out the crackling din engulfing them both, and he holds his ground.

Incrementally, they still slide forward. A bone maybe cracks in Dean’s chest.

And then. And then.

There’s a flash of bright light behind Cas’s eyes. With a loud scream Dean hopes he’ll never have to hear again – like his very essence is being torn – a slither of angel Grace explodes out from his mouth. Against the darkness of the abyss, Dean sees the blurry imprint of wings, too many wings, thrashing animal heads, eyes that blink and roll and shatter, things he should not see. The foreign Grace is promptly sucked up into the void behind him, and Dean seizes the only chance he’ll ever get.

He pulls, and Castiel falls free. With the sudden force of his release, Dean stumbles backwards and catches Castiel’s body against his own, heads knocking together painfully and stepping on each other’s feet.

The portal, having fed into the abyss what it was commanded to, closes behind them. Dean watches it knit back together, and watches those wings fade into nothing.

It is still and silent for a moment, too still, like time has been put on pause and hasn’t restarted yet, where Dean shakes and pants against the angel in his arms. He can feel himself sweating everywhere, from his hairline to the backs of his knees. He doesn’t dare move, just in case this isn’t real. He stands, waits for time to start again, and tightens his hold on Castiel’s coat.

This stupid coat. He’s never really liked it. It replaced the last one and never looked quite as good; he would tug at the hem and shake his head, but now. Oh, now. He could write sonnets about this coat. He would pay homage to this coat every day for the rest of his life. This is the coat that held together while Dean reached into the void and yanked his best friend out of it. Its stitches held and it’s soft in his grip and gosh he just really loves this fucking coat.

It is that relief, and the sensation of the coat against his palms that brings him back to the now. His knees buckle. Castiel falls with him – a tree in loose soil, a temple with a cracked foundation. He crumples against Dean’s chest and falls into his lap and wheezes as he gulps down fresh air. Dean’s hands are fisted tight against his back and he just yanks him closer, ducks his nose into his hair, heart racing. He won’t dare move until the quiet that’s settled in around them ruptures and the world begins to spin again. He’s distantly aware of softly spoken words tumbling from his lips, but even he can’t make them out over the ringing in his ears.

Dean has him. No one else. He pulled him back from the edge of the abyss and Castiel followed.

“Dean.”

The word rocks him to his core in a way that powers bigger than him never could.

He isn’t letting go.

 

Cas sleeps all the way back to Lebanon. Dean has been holding onto him since they left the battleground, trying to patch up some of the worst wounds on him since it’s obvious his Grace isn’t going to do it for him, curled around each other in the backseat of the Impala. Sam darts his eyes back there in the rearview every couple of minutes, brow creased, blood dripping sluggishly down his temple until it cakes there. Dean says nothing. Sam, if possible, says even less.

He is loath to wake him again when they pull up to the front door of the bunker. It’s closer to the hallway of bedrooms though, so Dean puts a hand on Castiel’s shoulder and nudges. Murmurs his name and hates how his voice still shakes.

Castiel lets himself be moved. Stirs and sits up and wobbles and Dean grounds him once again with a hand fisted in his coat.

“He gonna be ok?” Sam asks, when the angel is put down in his room.

Dean shrugs. “I really hope so.”

Sam hovers. He stares and he hovers and Dean is too tired to fight him off right now. “What,” he says.

“I just. Um. What you did back there. That was…” Sam says.

 _Stupid, reckless,_ Dean thinks he’s going to say.

“Incredible,” is what he does say.

Dean blinks. “Come again?”

Sam shakes his head. “Dean, that. I can’t even believe you – I mean. _Dean._ You pulled Cas away from something that took God’s friggin sister. It was amazing, man, I don’t know what else to say.”

Dean shifts his weight. Fidgets. “Well, what was I supposed to do?” he asks. He winces; his throat is raw from yelling and the defensive tone he’s taking – pitching his voice lower – hurts.

Placating hands come out to wave in his face. “Hey, no. I’m not saying you shouldn’t have. I’m saying…” He tilts his head, frowns. “I’m just saying. That I’m really proud of you. I’m saying I wish I – that I knew how to love like that.”

Dean stands there. His heart swells. He’s got his best friend and his brother on his side again, the Big Bad’s dealt with, everything is peaches and cream from here until Sunday. He’s too tired to fight the surge of emotion that rears up over him. “Ah, geez, Sammy. Look, can we do this later? I’m really fuckin’ beat.”

Sam laughs, and the sound is a little wet. “Yeah. Yeah. Go lay down, ok? Maybe take a hot shower, loosen up the knots.”

Dean blows out a sigh and turns away. “Kay, but first I need a _drink_. I’ve earned this one.”

“Dean,” Sam calls.

He turns back, and Sam smiles at him. “Hurry up, ok? He’s going to need someone to wake up to.”

Dean pauses, fingers already itching towards the liquor cabinet.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he promises.

Sam nods, and limps out of the room.

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr.](http://www.ozonecologne.tumblr.com)


End file.
